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France overrun by les rosbifs?


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[quote user="Russethouse"]

the idea of 'class' left my head many years ago, probably about the time I worked for what might then have been termed 'upper class' people - landed gentry etc. (Who also worked every day)[/quote]

Whatever you call the differences, they exist, even in France!   Spend 10 minutes in front of any school class and you'll be able to identify the different groups.  Behaviour, language, appearance, it's all there.

And although people might do the "bonjour" in the boulangerie and rub together at big social events, you can bet yer bottom dollar that villa-dwelling doctors and managers won't be getting too many personal dinner invitations from the HLM-dwelling factory workers!  Or vice versa. 

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People might be in denial about class existing, but it is still a valid grouping, and is definitely still a key demographic in market and social research.  Educational attainment for example is strongly linked to the class of the parent.

 The breakdowns are a bit more sophistated than they used to be, but you can certainly classify people by their occupation and education.  http://www.statistics.gov.uk/methods_quality/soc/structure.asp According to some recent research, it's just that everyone thinks they're middle class now....

For anyone interested in class in France, Pierre Bourdieu's "Distinction" looks at how  it affects consumption choices in France and how how "taste" is linked to class - bascially how what you do and what you like is linked to your social class and not your individual tastes.

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[quote user="le bouffon"]

, what a wally,..... rip van idiot !

You talk utter rubbish,. 

Now

if miki`s comments are not a personel insult I do not know what is,once

again he/she is allowed to get away with it,there is forum rules and

then it seems like there are rules for miki.[/quote]

Gotto give you it buffie you have some front, you consistently go

around insulting folks and contact people with venom but have a little laugh

about you and you go off on one. People in glasshouses eh ! More like

buffies doing a little bit of micky taking eh....PM'ing  mods to complain about

others, best laugh of the day.

Have no fear, if it makes your day better, the mods do send me PM's.

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 Educational attainment for example is strongly linked to the class of the parent.

 

This may be true but I would still question it.  My roots are definitely working class but this didn't stop my parents encouraging us to do well at school and in higher education.  They were so proud  -  it was worth it !

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I haven't forgotten my roots, but I am glad that I have moved onwards and upwards, if I can use such a phrase.

Having driven round the estate where I grew up, to visit a very elderley neighbour, I just could not identify with many of the people who were now living there. I don't think that makes me a snob, but I think there is a different mentality amongst some who live there now.

Just let me climb into my thick skin before the flak starts!

 

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I was trying to think when my father, just as an example, stopped being working class. His mother abandoned him with his grandmother who was a char, divorced and still had her own children at home, money was very tight there is no doubt they were poor. They were definatley working class then. Did it change when he came out of the army after the war perhaps and went to work in a hardware shop? Or when he went out each evening selling vacuum cleaners so he could improve his lot, when he bought the house the family  had rented for 50 years, or when he moved out of the terrace in a town to a semi in a village? Perhaps it was when he started being paid monthly? Or perhaps when he stopped respecting people solely because they had more money and swank?

Interesting topic - just what is the marker for being 'working class' ?

 

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[S][quote user="Miki"][quote user="le bouffon"]

, what a wally,..... rip van idiot !

You talk utter rubbish,. 

Now if miki`s comments are not a personel insult I do not know what is,once again he/she is allowed to get away with it,there is forum rules and then it seems like there are rules for miki.[/quote]

Gotto give you it buffie you have some front, you consistently go around insulting folks and contact people with venom but have a little laugh about you and you go off on one. People in glasshouses eh ! More like buffies doing a little bit of micky taking eh....PM'ing  mods to complain about others, best laugh of the day.

Have no fear, if it makes your day better, the mods do send me PM's.

[/quote]

 

Hi folks newbie alert [:D]

 

Just joined after sitting here reading this thread till 4am [S]

 

Miki dude I have to agree with just about everything you have said you crack me up mate [H]

 

As a newbie not knowing anyone here and past history etc I feel I am able to maybe offer an unbiased view on a few things if  I may ?

 

le bouffon
Miki is right you seem to run around this thread insulting folk and making remarks and as soon as Miki responds yo get huffy about it [8-)] as I said no axe to grind here just an unbiased view from a newbie I mean take a look at the quote from above
[quote]
, what a wally,..... rip van idiot !

You talk utter rubbish,. 
[/quote]
[;)]

 

Another thing I find strange being a member of other forums and being a moderator on some is the moderators here getting involved in the discussion, i.e. taking an obvious stance/side it must make unbiased moderating difficult in particular the comment about the "days of the working class being flat cap wearing, pigeon fancying, manual labour being history" really ??? take a trip to some working class areas in the North( my place of birth) still alive and kicking as far as I can see and a question " so who is doing the manual labour these days, the aristocracy???" LOL

 

Oh well I suppose I just shot myself in the foot as a newbie [:$]








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 >The breakdowns are a bit more sophistated than they used to be, but you can certainly classify people by their occupation and education.  http://www.statistics.gov.uk/methods_quality/soc/structure.asp 

Acknowledged. Kathy C's post and yours made me realise that social resarch needs more concrete (even if anchored) definitions. The one quoted above is a better variant on the old ABC1 etc. (which even defined you by what your dad did !) but is not used much by Marketers.

>According to some recent research, it's just that everyone thinks they're middle class now....

Absolutely . We are nearly all drinking wine, holidaying abroad, worrying about education and owning property. Go figure

My original point was that how you behave is less driven by the job-based silos of the 50's and before. So the Marketing profession (Steve / Powerdesal please see www.CIM.co.uk the Chartered Institute with a worldwide footprint) now finds it more useful to clasify people by other methods. Frankly there are better indicators of what you care about and what you will spend money on than your job or your father's job. So I thought talking about 'class' was a bit old hat (or an excuse for snobbery/inverted snobbery whatever).

BUT. I do strongly suspect that one's family background affects one's educational attainment, if only because some families make 'learning' an easier and more natural thing to do.

AND I am sure we could find thoughtless yobs in all walks of life, just some will escape the consequences more easily.

 

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[quote user="Russethouse"]

I was trying to think when my father, just as an example, stopped being working class. ..... Or perhaps when he stopped respecting people solely because they had more money and swank?

Interesting topic - just what is the marker for being 'working class' ?

[/quote]

And one that came up in family discussion just the other week I respect the conundrum but have gone on at length elsewhere about the definitions.

Can I try a different tack now ? We bring our families up to have respect for others but not automatic deference to anybody. If working class meant (to paraphrase Ronnie Corbett) looking up to everybody and accepting their s***, then I hope the distinction is dead and buried.

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[quote user="viva"]

I haven't forgotten my roots, but I am glad that I have moved onwards and upwards, if I can use such a phrase.

Having driven round the estate where I grew up, to visit a very

elderley neighbour, I just could not identify with many of the people

who were now living there. I don't think that makes me a snob, but I

think there is a different mentality amongst some who live there now.

Just let me climb into my thick skin before the flak starts!

 

[/quote]

No flak from me. An evening school reunion some years ago became one of

the most depressing evenings of my life. The twenty years that

seperated us from school (at that time) in no way did justice to the

void that had appeared between my school mates and myself. I most certainly

didn't feel "better" than them, just that about the only thing we had

in common any longer was the English language, and there's a limit to

how long one can discuss the interesting twists of the Norfolk accent.

My background was hardly monied, and although I tend to regard

my roots as working class (at times my parents both had two jobs and

where moonlighting all over the place to make ends meet), certainly

some of my childhood contempories thought that I was middle class

because, according to them, I lived in house full of books, knew which

knife to use with fish and could reliably use "whom" in a sentence.

This was my first inkling that "class" and "money" were not necessarily equivalent.

I doubt that there is a society anywhere that is without some kind of

class structure. In any group of people there will be some who seek to

distiguish themselves and form groups within groups. I am acutely aware

of the "class" into which we have been placed in this village by dint

of our choice of school and some other factors that we neither sought

to influence nor had any real control over.

It would be a mistake to conclude that France is in anyway a classless

society. I would suggest that the layers of class and classes within

classes is far more complex than in, for example, the UK. What is

noticable is that material wealth seems to play a far more peripheral

role in deciding which class one ends up than in other countries.

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[quote user="Russethouse"]

KathyC, Which constituency are you in line for ? Sedgefield ? [;)]

I don't think you really answered my question. There was surely no way we could have gone on as the 'Sick man of Europe' the country had to do something and logic tells me that some of the 60% (of employees, not population?) voted Tory too, otherwise how did they win the election.?

As a country we simply had to encourage enterprise. The Labour government of the time just  wasn't doing that.

How many people on this site benefited under Thatcher? When she was elected we were just married, we worked our cotton socks off and furnished and improved our first home, then moved and did it again with the second (and we didn't have to queue up for a mortgage allocation as we had done under Callaghan)there was a feeling that any one who worked hard to get on and better themselves. Yes, there was a high price and personally  I bitterly regret Norman Tebbitts idea that if there was no work locally you should 'get on your bike' because it ignored the role the extended family played in the community....but realistically would any party have been any different in that respect? (In any case members of my own extended family had already found work away from the immediate area, it didn't seem much different to me at the time)

Labour has been in power a while now, but actually which Thatcher policy has it rescinded ? In actual fact they had to invent 'New Labour' to get rid of the Conservatives.

PS. Crikey, Miki, I remember Carolina Doors, nice bit of mahogany.........

[/quote]

 

Well we certainly didn't we had just bought our first house and got married, the interest rates shot through the roof and due to her meddling in the TV industry my wife lost a good job when  Thames TV lost their franchise due to dear Maggie not liking a programme they made, enterprise seemed to consist of financial advisors foisting endowment mortgages on people for their own benefit making wild promises yes promises of future wealth that are now turning into actual financial disasters e.g. our mortgage should have been paid off this year but guess what we have had to convert to a repayment with another 15 years to pay[8o|] as it wasn't until we queried it a couple of years ago that we were informed the endowment was never going to pay what was initially promised ( I really love paying twice for the same thing dontcha know) another Thatcherite debacle coming home to roost along with utility privatisations and council house sales, twas' all about "get rich quick" and sod the future... oh and everybody else[8o|]

 

I was one of those that "Got on their bike " although I had already done it by the time Tebbitt said it. I moved from the NE to Surrey and instead of applying for 100 jobs with with no result got offered 3 jobs within a week.... BUT the only reason I could do it was because my brother already lived in Surrey so I lived with them for 2 years, I could not have done it otherwise, I knew many others that tried and ended up in financial ruin through it[:'(]

 

 

The person that was talking about unemployment figures( sorry I can't remember who[:$]) was correct, for my sins I worked from 1978 to 1999 in the Employment Service and can confirm that the figures bear as much relation to reality something penned by Hans Christian Anderson or Walt Disney[;)]

So why do I no longer work there? well I was thrown on the scrapheap after 21 years and after much arguing by my wife, GP and even their medical advisors(on my side) they retired me on a crappy pension because of aforesaid dear Maggies policies and Blair's continuation of them driving me and many others half way up the wall.

 

So yeah I really benefitted under Thatcher and her rightfull successor Tony Blair

 

PS. We put a Carolina door on our first house Miki [;)] they were cheap and better than the crumbling bit of wood that was already there(not an ex-council house by the way[:P])LOLOLOL

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Bassman re

Another thing I find strange being a member of other forums and being a moderator on some is the moderators here getting involved in the discussion, i.e. taking an obvious stance/side it must make unbiased moderating difficult

Not really - if I (or any other mod) needs to say something official we just say 'Mod hat on' it works pretty well. We have mod by the side of our names so we can be identified easily for other members to communicate. Don't worry I am scrupulously fair even (and often) at my own expense!

BTW - Endowment policies existed before Thatcher and we too will not pay off the capital when the policy matures, but I blame myself for making the wrong choice.

What would have been your alternative to 'Thatcherism'?

 

 

 

 

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We have had one or two houses (and a yacht),paid the first one off in 6years,moved to a semi then bought the first house here in France for cash then the second,sold the semi,and now have anothere house in the same village here in France.Working class sure I worked hard and so did the other half of the bouffie household,I have been homeless pennyless,left school at 15 with nothing really in the way exams.That is why I would still say I/we are working class.
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[quote user="Owens88"]

 Frankly there are better indicators of what you care about and what you will spend money on than your job or your father's job. So I thought talking about 'class' was a bit old hat (or an excuse for snobbery/inverted snobbery whatever).

BUT. I do strongly suspect that one's family background affects one's educational attainment, if only because some families make 'learning' an easier and more natural thing to do.

[/quote]

In fairness, I don't think any researcher would dare to classify someone according to their father's profession any more!  And Head of Household is now the person earning the most - not the man of the house.  In marketing and social research, class is never really just about money: it's a combination of profession and educational level, which generally translates into higher salaries.  It is only by employing people for instance, that a plumber can move out of being working class, even if he's earning five times as much as the teacher next door and taking holidays in Chiantishire.  Obviously there are people who really don't fit into the box the marketeers assign them, but they're pretty useful rules of thumbs.  I'm sure there are plenty of members of the British royal family would would be classified as C2DE or working class based on their lack of employment or third level education!

Newspapers do still take note of class and use it to attract advertisers.  Everyone wants the ABC1s and those that can't realistically get them want the "aspirationals" - those who aren't technically ABC1, but want to spend or behave like them (or how they perceive them to behave).  For the majority of people, terms like "working class" or "middle class" have fluid meanings, depending on the speaker.  I know people who take pride in the terms while others despise being labelled. 

The French version of ABC1 is relatively similar,  - although apparently they base classification on your last job rather than your current one. 

 

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[quote user="Pangur"]

Newspapers do still take note of class and use it to attract advertisers. 

[/quote]

Only the lazy or uninformed advertisers. We generally use better determinants and ask for better info. The good papers provide it, the rest we don't advertise in unless its dead cheap and/or we can take a punt based on our own judgement.

Or perhaps that is a bit harsh. Let me say it a different way. If you have a product of fairly broad appeal, to almost anybody with money who can travel, say. Then the circulation stats and the ABC1 stats will have a good correlation and either will provide a good way of demonstrating whether paper x will serve up more punters than paper Y.  However if you are selling maths tuition courses or cars or anything more targetted then your will ask for more sophisticated info.

For comparison, magazines and other non printed media are even more complex in the 'types' of  audiences they deliver. 

 

Meanwhile, where is that thread about sous-tuiles ?

Cheers

 

 

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Sorry, I only recognise two classes in UK

Working Class Including Me, Her Madge, David Beckham, people who want to work but cant due to illness, retired people who used to work, Dai Bloggs down the chippie, and Paris Hilton who is lucky enough to have fun on family wealth which has employed people and paid taxes.

Social Security Scroungers Those to expect to be kept for a living including those who dont like work and laugh at those in the above category.

 

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PS. We put a Carolina door on our first house Miki,  they were

cheap and better than the crumbling bit of wood that was already

there(not an ex-council house by the way)  LOLOLOL

Have no fear Bassman, we fitted dozens of 'em, along with Kentucky

doors by the gross ! It's the customer is always right syndrome !!

I have to say though, Blair may not be many peoples cup of tea and as a

socialist, he is out of sync but to go back to some old socialist

policies, would not be a smart move BUT let's be fair here, all those

that have come here in recent years have benefitted greatly from the

huge hike in prices.

Us, well we bought our second place at the bottom of yet another Tory

induced slump and the French house prices where we bought, were not

(for the greater part, regardless of what one is told) reliant on Brits

buying, so they were selling at French prices, not at a reduced slump

related price, although the French have had years where prices have

slipped but sadly, not when we have bought !!

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[quote user="Russethouse"]

Bassman re

Another thing I find strange being a member of other forums and being a moderator on some is the moderators here getting involved in the discussion, i.e. taking an obvious stance/side it must make unbiased moderating difficult

Not really - if I (or any other mod) needs to say something official we just say 'Mod hat on' it works pretty well. We have mod by the side of our names so we can be identified easily for other members to communicate. Don't worry I am scrupulously fair even (and often) at my own expense!

BTW - Endowment policies existed before Thatcher and we too will not pay off the capital when the policy matures, but I blame myself for making the wrong choice.

What would have been your alternative to 'Thatcherism'?

 

 

 

 

[/quote]

 

 

From time spent on other forums I would have thought it leaves you open to accusations of being biased in who and why you moderate, if that doesn't happen here then great [;)] thinking more of you than anything else as I have seen this happen all too often elswhere, a moderator gives their view then has to moderate someone with the opposite viewpoint and all hell breaks loose [:(]

 

 

You had a choice when you took out your mortgage???????   our first mortgage was a repayment we were very happy with it, when we decided to move house our second mortgage was a repayment which we were happy with, the third time  the dear yuppie IFA  said " oh you don't want a repayment in fact you won't get one as no one is doing them anymore, you will have to have this endowment and not only will it pay off your mortgage but give you at least £20,000 in your pocket," I pointed out that with the inflation at the time £20,000 could be loose change in 20 years and our main concern was that the mortgage be paid off, we were never warned that there was any chance this could/would not be the case . Now as these mortgage advisors were supposedly "independant" and working in OUR best interests and the EXPERTS ( I am not a financial expert as I would not expect them to be expert in my field of work) we were under pressure to get the finance sorted out we took the offered mortgage. All was apparently going well and on target to pay off the mortgage and leave us with a tidy lump sum until about 4 years before the final date when suddenly it's not only not going to pay the bonuses it's not even going to pay offf the original loan [8o|]

 

Now I never said that endowments were not around pre-Thatcher BUT they were not sold in the aggresive underhand manner of underThatcher get rich quick, screw everyone else, I want my Porsche now, selfish arrogant yuppie, we don't need to produce anything we can make money shuffling bits of paper, oh arn't I clever, by the time this comes home to roost I'll be long gone stylee

 

 

My alternative to Thatcher?

 

 

You won't like it!

 

 

 

 

 

You really won't like it!!!

 

 

 

 

 

Seriously won't like it one little bit!!!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A proper Socialist govt. led by some one like Tony Benn with a sense of social justice and social responsibility with the bottle to stand up to the crap managment that ruled British industry and still does

 

 

See I said you wouldn't like it LOL

 

An example of why privatisation didn't work, it's made a lot of people a bit of money and a very few stacks of dosh

 

Water--- if privatisation is so much better why are we already facing hosepipe bans in March???? because people are wasteful== to an extent, because the staff keep going on strike == not at all, because the shareholders take all the profit leaving nothing or not enough in the kitty for investment and stop more water leaking out of un-maintained pipes into the ground than is actually used by paying customers == TOO DAMN RIGHT

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[quote user="KatieKopyKat"]

Sorry, I only recognise two classes in UK

Working Class Including Me, Her Madge, David Beckham, people who want to work but cant due to illness, retired people who used to work, Dai Bloggs down the chippie, and Paris Hilton who is lucky enough to have fun on family wealth which has employed people and paid taxes.

Social Security Scroungers Those to expect to be kept for a living including those who dont like work and laugh at those in the above category.

 

[/quote]

 

I'd actually go with that definition [;)]

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We bought our first house in the early 80`s paid it up,kept the endownment and that with bonus was worth more than the house when it came in...nice little earner.The later problem was that some years later when everyone heard about how good they were,they nose dived.The mid to late 80`s were a good time for savers 15% interest,the good old days bring um back,now in france 2.6% on savings if you are lucky or .....................go see a french bank manager.
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